Obama caused border crisis; House will fix it

A few weeks ago, I visited an unaccompanied alien children (UAC) detention center at Fort Sill, Okla. This facility housed approximately 1,000 male and female teens who were apprehended crossing the border.

Many of these children arrived with nothing more than a piece of paper containing the name and phone number of their “host.” Officials estimated that at least 25 percent of the children at Fort Sill were sexually abused during their journey. At other facilities, that estimate is as high as 50 percent.

Given all that has happened, our border remains far from secure. Some officials estimate that a second wave of 30,000 unaccompanied children is expected in the cooler autumn months. If the statistics hold, 25 percent to 50 percent of those will have been subjected to sexual trauma. We cannot continue to allow this crisis to continue.

Congress must take action to address this crisis. These children are precious in the eyes of their creator and must not be treated as political pawns. The most compassionate thing we can do is to unify them with their families and remove them from the abusive hand of their smugglers.

On July 31, the House decided to stay in Washington and work. The Senate had already left town for their August recess. President Obama held a press conference to let the world know he found dealing with Congress untenable and that the body was dysfunctional because they could not do what he, not the American people, wanted done. Therefore, he would take action — executive action — with his pen and tend to the immigration issue.

The creation of all laws is left to Congress. The power to the president is to fairly implement the law. If he can allow illegal aliens to freely run across our border, can he force legal citizens out of the country? If he can delay part of a law, can he delay an entire law? Where does his authority begin and end? We are not an imperialist government with a monarch abiding by the rule of one man.

The House took the correct action to pass an immigration bill to address the crisis on the southern border. We took the correct action to freeze a program that was put in place by executive memo of the president on June 15, 2012, and implemented on Aug. 15, 2012. It was and remains an unconstitutional action that allows an unlawful act to be carried out every day, and this action has turned every town and every state into a border town and a border state. This president caused the border crisis. He has the tools at his disposal to fix the crisis. He has chosen not to address the crisis, not to visit the border, but instead to continue to incentivize the border crossings by ignoring the issue and not taking an action. Therefore, since he is not doing his job, we are doing our job and are going to address the situation.

The House passed my legislation, HR 5272, to solve this crisis at the border. I am hopeful the Senate will join us in addressing this important issue. To allow the situation to continue is not only unfair to American citizens who live on the southern border, but also to the children who are being victimized at the hands of perpetrators.